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Ironic, isn't it?

What's ironic about the
right-wing fight against Gay Marriage is that it works in favor of
creating a positive vision of gay life, and it shows the "Christians"
to be very unchristian.

In the 1980s, when AIDS was devastating the gay male population in
American's big cities, the right-wing emphasized how prodigiously
promiscuous some gay men had been: they quoted figures showing that
homosexuals had thousands of sexual partners in their lives. They gave
the public reason to be judgmental and resentful of gay men who seemed
to be getting so much sex. They said AIDS was a punishment for
promiscuity.

In the early 2000s, the
right-wing is attacking gay people for wanting to be monogamous!

What's really happening is that the public--and especially gay
teenagers (for whom this is important, life-shaping information)--are
seeing that gay people are happy, long-term, successful couples who
found love and happiness.

The gay people who are politely asking for the benefits and recognition
of their relationships as parallel to straight people's marriages
appear sweet, well-meaning, harmless. Some are attractive and sexy;
many are middle-aged and dumpy.

The people who look deranged and narrow-minded and mean-spirited are
the "Christians" who proclaim themselves offended by gay marriage.

Why would people go out of their way to oppose somebody else's
happiness?
Can you imagine Jesus doing that? Or Buddha? Or Thomas Jefferson?

The behavior of the right-wing Christians simply shows they don't
understand the basic teachings of Jesus. They apparently were more
interested in reading the rules in Leviticus, saying who to hate and
who to stone, than in reading the Sermon on the Mount or Jesus's
revelation that the "New Commandment" is to love other people,
recognizing them as other manifestations of your own self.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice's sake, for they
shall be filled."
That saying of Jesus seems to refer to gay people's struggle for
acceptance and understanding.

What's ironic is that if they just shut up and let gay marriage be
accepted quietly, a small of gay couples who really needed the legal
and health benefits would take advantage of the opportunity, and the
whole issue would disappear from the public's attention. But because
the right-wing has chosen this as THE wedge issue--which they identify
as "morality" itself--they keep forcing the quite gay couples in the
suburbs to come forth and declare themselves. And the public gets to
see that for many homosexuals gay life means settling down into a
stable couple just like straight life.

The more the right-wing tries to demonize us by showing we want to get
married the more normal WE look!

What else is ironic

You know what else is ironic in this battle of the
right-wing to turn American democracy into a Christian theocracy is
their great reverence for these stone engraved monuments of the Ten
Commandments that are scattered around the country on government
property.

In the first place, those monuments were created and given to the
states as a movie promotion for Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten
Commandments. They are hardly sacred monuments or historical treasures;
they were an advertising gimmick for Hollywood.

Besides--and more important--the first of the Ten Commandments forbids
the making of graven images! Not only are these monuments a potential
violation of separation of church and state in a modern liberal
democratic society, they are self-contradictory. Even God
didn't want graven monuments to his commandments!

And the last commandment of the Ten forbids covetuousness. What else is
covetuousness except the aim of advertising? Advertising is designed to
make people want things they don't have and other people do. That's
coveting.

The basis of American business these days is advertising, encouraging
people to covet the goods big business is offering them in a
seldom-fulfilled promise to make them happy.

If devout Christians really want to honor the Ten Commandments
shouldn't they change something about their own lives, rather
than try to foul up gay people's lives?

Shouldn't Christians be picketing against advertising? And about graven
images, for that matter! What could be more Judeo-Christian than
an iconoclastic purge of religious images in the name of spiritual
purity--and obedience to the First Commandment?

More Irony

The priest pedophilia scandals of the last few years clearly show that
there's something about priesthood and religious indoctrination that
makes adult men incapable of leading mature sex lives.

The scandals are about the error of popular religion in dealing with
sex.

But the irony is that it was the priests' homosexuality that was
blamed, not their priesthood.

That it was priesthood that was the problem and not homosexuality is
demonstrated by the large (but generally invisible) proportion of
priestly sexual misbehavior that was heterosexual. Nearly half the
victims in the victim organizations are women. It was NOT the priests'
homosexuality that got these women abused.

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.